The Paradoxes of Liberal Democracy: Why Modern Democratic States are Failing and How They Could Be Fixed
The Houston Centre invites you to join Bruce Pardy on Wednesday, October 1, for a lecture titled "The Paradoxes of Liberal Democracy: Why Modern Democratic States are Failing and How They Could Be Fixed." The event will take place at 7 pm at UBC’s Sage Lecture Hall.
About the Event
The Houston Centre is dedicated to examining models of human identity and their social implications. In this lecture, Professor of Law at Queen's University Dr. Bruce Pardy will look at political ideals and structures of Western societies that are considered foundational to human flourishing: individual liberty and democracy.
Dr. Pardy argues that individual liberty is the seminal achievement of Western civilization, yet modern democratic states have become liberty’s leading threat, rife with paradoxes that imperil freedom, prosperity, and human flourishing instead of protecting them. In this lecture, Dr. Pardy will ask: What are these paradoxes, and can they be resolved? What would such a constitutional order look like? Is it necessary to leave liberalism behind and start again? He will discuss how to protect liberty and foster human flourishing by resolving the paradoxes of the liberal democratic state.
Dr. Caroline Elliott will provide a response
About the Speakers
Professor Bruce Pardy is a classically liberal legal academic who considers equal application of the law, negative rights, private property, limited government, and separation of powers to be foundational to the Canadian and Western legal tradition. A critic of legal progressivism, social justice, and the discretionary administrative state, he has written on a range of pressing legal subjects at the front lines of the culture debates inside the law, including environmental governance, climate change, energy policy, human rights and freedoms, professional and university governance, property and tort theory, free markets, and the rule of law. He has taught at law schools in Canada, the United States, and New Zealand; practiced civil litigation at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP in Toronto; served as adjudicator and mediator on the Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal; and has published and commented widely in traditional and online media. He serves as senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, and helped to birth the Runnymede Society, a branch of the Canadian Constitution Foundation. He spearheaded resistance to and ultimate repeal of the Law Society of Ontario’s statement of principles (SOP) policy that required Ontario lawyers to attest to their ideological purity to maintain their licence to practice. He is one of the co-creators of the Free North Declaration, a public petition and movement to protect civil liberties in Canada from COVID-19 irrationality and overreach.
Dr. Caroline Elliott is a Senior Fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, a director on the board of BC’s Public Land Use Society, and a longtime commentator on politics and complex policy issues. She is a frequent panelist on BC’s most-watched and listened-to TV and radio programs, and her written commentary regularly appears in leading national and provincial publications. Caroline has a PhD in Political Science from Simon Fraser University, specializing in Canadian liberal democracy as it relates to Indigenous self-governance, and has taught at the university level as an instructor of political science at SFU. Through her commentary, academic work and organizations, Caroline has been a vigorous proponent of liberal democratic principles and a strong critic of government policies that threaten them. With a belief in direct political engagement as a way of driving meaningful change, Caroline has served as a strategist, candidate, and vice-president of a major BC political party. Early in her career, Caroline was a ministerial staffer at the BC Legislature.
Event Details
Location: Sage Lecture Hall (The University Centre, 6331 Crescent Rd, Vancouver)
Parking: Paid parking is available in the UBC Rose Garden Parkade.
